There are various types of dental arch appliances which comprise silicone for fitting an appliance over teeth of a person's dental arch. Certain appliances may have particular constructional features and/or include one or more non-silicone elements in their construction for enabling a particular appliance to perform a particular function.
Two examples of such appliances are mouth guards and snore guards. A mouth guard is worn by a person to protect his/her teeth against injury from an external source or from his/her own tooth grinding. A snore guard is worn when a person is sleeping to prevent snoring. Other appliances are used for dental procedures.
One type of mouth guard is a pre-formed, non-adjustable one which, although slightly resiliently compressible, cannot be reshaped by the user to achieve precise conformance to the user's individual teeth. Pre-formed mouth guards are typically fabricated as a commodity product by injection molding a thermoset plastic material in a mold cavity.
Another type of mouth guard, sometimes called a “boil and bite” mouth guard, can enable the user to achieve a better fit than with the pre-formed, non-adjustable type because it is manufactured by molding thermoset plastic in a mold cavity. As manufactured, the mouth guard has a general shape for fitting unto an arch. The user who has purchased such a mouth guard heats it in hot water to soften the thermoplastic. Once the material has cooled, but is still somewhat soft and formable, the user puts the mouth guard in the mouth and forms it around individual teeth. When fully cooled, the material retains the shape to which it has been formed by the user while retaining some resilient compressibility.
Custom-fit mouth guards are yet another type. This type precisely fits a person's dental arch and is typically fabricated in a dental office or laboratory. The fabrication process begins by taking an impression of the person's dental arch. The impression is then used to fabricate a model of the person's arch. A dentist or laboratory technician next mixes together a formable material and a catalyst for curing the formable material to create an appropriate amount of workable bulk material for forming onto the arch model. The formable material and the catalyst have respective formulations which initiate curing of the material upon mixing such that they provide a limited length of time for the dentist or technician to create an impression in the material which will capture minute features of the arch. The time may be sufficiently limited that minute features may not be captured.
As the bulk material is being worked onto the arch model by the fabricator to capture a desired impression of the arch model, the material may cure sufficiently that the outward appearance of the material cannot be further changed by the use of the same tool or tools which had heretofore been used. In that case a different tool or tools have to be used in order to achieve a desired finished appearance for the appliance. The need to use such tools, such as cutters and grinders contributes to the amount of time and labor involved in creating the final appliance.
Because of the nature of the raw materials and the amount of time and labor involved in its fabrication, a custom-made mouth guard is typically considerably more expensive than the previously mentioned types although it is certainly a better finished product.